The image it’s cropped from (found on Outdoor Spanking) includes the newspaper clipping, which explains:

The photo above, taken in 1940 at the University of Utah, shows an actual sorority paddling. Five girls, guilty of offenses such as letting their skirts rise too high, are in position and awaiting the paddle. The pledge on the right has just been swatted.

I’m pretty sure I saw this in Life Magazine. Not in 1940 — I wasn’t old enough to be reading it then, but during my teens I probably located it by looking up “Corporal Punishment” in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, a big fat multivolume index that every library used to have. If anyone’s public library still has bound volumes of Life going back to 1940, they might try looking for it. (Sometimes, unfortunately, pictures like this have been razored out and carried off by someone who thinks he’s the only spanko in the world whose interests matter.)

Oldguy is correct. I definitely found this years ago in a bound library collection of LIFE magazine. You could look it up, but it doesn’t seem necessary as the photo is the best part. I don’t remember that there was much other interesting information in the accompanying caption.

Public Punishment: Sorority sister Tony Ryberg collects the wages of her misdemeanor on the steps of the student union building while other members who committed various violations of the dress code await their turn at the paddle.”